The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth.

Chapter 59: LETTER LV.

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About This Book

An epistolary novel recounts a series of letters that expose a courtship and a concealed seduction whose revelation brings shame, illness, and familial ruin, used to dramatize the moral dangers of reckless passion. Through careful narration and moral commentary, the correspondence traces how social conventions, personal weakness, and misplaced sympathy produce personal and domestic catastrophe while urging prudence, female self-respect, and the restorative force of nature and truth. Written in a sentimental, didactic mode, the work blends realistic social observation with moral exhortation and is structured to instruct readers about the consequences of seduction and the virtues of restraint.

LETTER LV.

Harrington to Worthy.

Boston.

AM I a child that I should weep?—I have been meditating on the course of my calamities—Why did my father love Maria—or rather, why did I love their Harriot? Curse on this tyrant custom that dooms such helpless children to oblivion or infamy! Had I known her to have been my sister, my love would have been regular, I should have loved her as a sister, I should have marked her beauty—I should have delighted in protecting it. I should have observed her growing virtues—I should have been happy in cherishing their growth. But alas! She is gone—and I cannot stay—I stand on the threshold of a vast eternity.